Beetle Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

to come in that same night and hear her thoughts on Liam. When he hung up, he winked at Liam and said, “You’re one lucky amigo, hanging around with Senorita Dahlia.”
    Liam said, “I hate her.”
    This surprised even Dad. “Whoa, little amigo, you don’t want to talk that way about your first teacher.”
    â€œAll she ever does is yell at me.”
    â€œI’ll talk some sense into her,” he promised.
    Talk some sense into her. It was something he used to say regularly about Mom, and so I wasn’t optimistic about Mrs. Dahlia. I looked across the table at Liam. He looked unusually happy, apparently thrilled that Dad was going to talk some sense into his teacher. The strangest things made him happy. I would die before I’d want Dad to visit my teacher.
    â€œMove it, boys, get yourselves ready for school,” Dad said. It was Wednesday, his day to meet Sam and critique the latest illustrations. According to Dad, the drawings were “phenomenal,” his new favorite word. I had overheard him telling several people on the phone that I was a phenomenal writer. I knew perfectly well that I wasn’t a phenomenal writer, but I was hoping against hope that the illustrations would take the book to a new level. And somehow make them seem less stolen.
    â€œWhen do I get to see the illustrations?” I asked Dad while I threw together two lunches.
    â€œSoon,” he promised. “Maybe this weekend. Prepare to be blown away.”

    Clara has been on a cleaning and organizing rampage ever since her parents agreed to come over and have lunch with us and meet me, the invalid moocher boyfriend. I am watching a sitcom after a pizza when I hear Clara poking around in the closet of her bedroom, where I have recently stored my ridiculously small cache of personal belongings. I grab my crutches and hobble into the bedroom, calling her name. “Clara? Clara? What are you doing?”
    Just rearranging, Charlie.
    She is standing on a stool, moving things around on the topmost shelf of her closet. One of her outstretched hands is touching my boxes. I stand behind her and struggle not to knock the stool out from under her feet with my crutch.
    â€œCould you just leave those alone?” I say.
    But Clara has tipped the closest box with her outstretched hand, and it falls from the shelf into her open arms. She pops down from the stool and turns to me, holding it, a cardboard box. A box I kept after Mrs. M. bought me a laptop for high school graduation. The box was heavy and nondescript and had a folding lid. Clara rattles it, her eyes bright with curiosity.
    What’s in it, Charlie? Anything you might need?
    Anything I might need? Yes, a few odd things that I need, although I could never in a million years have explained why. Why do I need photos of people I am unrelated to? Why do I need a gaudy, fake-diamond encrusted pen? Why do I need a card from my only birthday with Mrs. M.—why did I keep that card? Why do I still have a flyer from the first author conference, the day that I met her?
    â€œCould you just put it back for now? Please? And we’ll go through it sometime when I’m not so tired?”
    She is miffed. She turns her back to me, lifts the box up, reaching mightily and shoving the box back onto the top shelf of her closet. But not before a single wallet-sized photo makes its way under the lid and flutters to the floor. I know whose photo it is without needing to see it—Rita Marie Dean, pretty in a fierce, beady-eyed way, the answer to a desperate six-year-old’s prayers.
    It’s a school photo of a little girl! With red hair. Who is she, Charlie?
    My answer is an unimaginative lie. “A cousin who died.”
    Clara’s face droops with concern. Another sad story. I distract her from the closet by asking her if there is anything good in the kitchen for dessert. She follows me into the kitchen to make me something, something to cheer